


The Wedding Video

by lucyrne (theungenue)



Category: Soul Eater
Genre: F/M, Old Married Couple, Post-Canon, post-manga, steinmarie baby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-02
Updated: 2016-06-02
Packaged: 2018-07-11 17:29:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7062601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theungenue/pseuds/lucyrne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Marie stumbles upon her wedding video on her 18th anniversary, she sits down with her husband and daughter to watch it for the first time. To her chagrin, she discovers she is hardly in it at all. </p>
<p>Based on the true story of my parents wedding video.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wedding Video

**Author's Note:**

> This wasn't betaed, and it's my first offering for steinmarie. I hope you enjoy it :)

A compulsion to toss out an entire marriage’s worth of junk was derailed in an instant when a thin, dusty DVD case slipped out of a stack of manilla folders. Marie Mjolnir-Stein couldn’t remember how it got trapped in the middle of her husband’s old research data, and she didn’t know why it had taken so long to surface. But when she picked up the small case and blew the dust off the jacket, her single eye went wide.

MJOLNIR/STEIN - WEDDING

“Franken!” She blurted. “FRANKEN!”

Rather than wait for a response, Marie dropped all off the files in a waterfall of paper and hurried back up the flight of stairs. 

When she emerged, her husband and their daughter were sitting on the couch browsing medical magazines together. Shelly was in the throes of college applications, and before her mother had ventured into the dark abyss that was their basement, she was reading up on the latest in medical science for ‘essay inspiration.’ Her current choice had a very wrinkly doctor putting on latex gloves on the front cover.

Though Shelly did not look up from her magazine, Franken’s eyes met Marie’s before sliding to the DVD. “I thought we destroyed our special home videos after Shelly tried to watch them at a sleepover when she was twelve,” he said. The dryness in his voice masked the innuendo, but 18 years of marriage had left Marie more than well-attuned to his subtleties.

“ _Those,_ yes. But _this?_ This is something I’ve been searching for this for _years,”_ Marie said, turning the DVD case over in her hands. “Shelly, your father and I have actually never seen our wedding video. We were so busy with, well, _you_ that our hands were full the moment we returned from the honeymoon. It just got put away and lost, the way old things do. But I’ve found it, after all these years!”

This was _marvelous._ All these memories of her special day preserved like petrified bark in the basement of their home. To unearth this artifact after so long--their eighteenth anniversary in fact--felt right. Fated. And now she could relive that wonderful day right next to both loves of her life. 

“We don’t have a DVD player,” Franken noted.

“Invent one.”

“I’m not that kind of scientist. I tinker with human bodies, not electronics.”

Shelly looked up from her magazines to offer her parents some reprieve. “My laptop has a CD port.” Their daughter always was the most pragmatic and sensible of the family.

“Excellent!” Marie said with a clap of her hands. She sat on Shelly’s left side and buzzed with excitement as her daughter opened her laptop and popped the DVD in. 

The DVD’s menu only had two buttons -- Play and Subtitles -- and the entire screen was a large, slightly pixelated photo of blob-like Marie and Franken sharing their first kiss at the altar. Even if it wasn’t the best quality picture, Marie couldn’t help but marvel at how _young_ they both looked. How was it possible for her waist to be so _thin?_ Especially so soon after having Shell! Her husband was still in his top physical form in those days too.

After they pressed play, the entire family was startled by jumpy, coarse camera angles and staticy audio. Marie couldn’t help but feel her heart fall. Would it be like this throughout the entire video? Luckily it seemed to steady as guests filed into the church and Spirit Albarn helped distribute programs.

Marie looked over at her husband. “Who is filming this? I distinctly remember Spirit filming at our reception, but he couldn’t have done the wedding too,” Marie pondered. “I mean look, he’s right there. Did we pay somebody?” 

“I don’t recall,” her husband said. “I’m sure it’ll come to me.”

As guests poured into the church, filling the room with excited conversation, the camera panned away from Spirit and settled on a familiar blonde with curled pigtails wearing an emerald dress, casting furtive glances around the room as she walked through the front door.

“Who is that?” Shelly asked.

Marie waved her hand dismissively. “Oh, that’s Maka Albarn. At the time she was one of our students. But look, behind her! There’s my cousins, and their troll spouses! Hmmm, I wonder if this video caught me saying ‘Up yours, Nora!’ while I walked down the aisle.” Franken laughed out loud.

The next few minutes of footage showed guests mingling in the foyer, speaking in hushed voices as the wedding party assembled somewhere offscreen. A whole cast of family members, former colleagues, students and friends slowly made their ways to the pews. Marie tried to point out different people, but the camera inextricably kept returning to Maka Albarn.

“There’s Maka again!” Shelly said when the footage slid back into the young meister’s orbit. It happened so many times that spotting Maka was almost like a game, albeit an incredibly easy one. Maka was constantly at the front and center of the shot no matter where she was. Sometimes, the camera even followed her movements around the room.

“Oh yeah,” Marie said, her voice falling a little. “I don’t remember her being so involved in the wedding, but she must have been. She’s absolutely everywhere.”

But that couldn’t be. Marie was certain she wasn’t in the wedding party. She and Stein had agreed that they would keep their entourages small so they could pour their money into other parts of the wedding--like the reception, the food, and above all, Marie’s dress. Maka was a guest, a simple guest. 

She was relieved when the film cut to everyone settling in the pews and the quarter tuning their instruments. The fun part was about to begin!

The camera panned from right to left across the church, capturing the hundred or so faces waiting in the pews. But before it finished cross the crowd, it stopped on Maka’s luminous face. A skylight in the church sealing poured golden sunlight directly on her, setting her blonde hair and green eyes aflame. The camera lingered on her face and then began to slowly zoom in.

“She looks so pretty here,” Shelly noted.

“Yes,” Marie replied, swallowing her irritation. “That dress really brings out her...eyes.” Her knuckles cracked as she clenched her fist.

For two infuriating minutes, the camera was fixated on Maka’s stupid glowing smile. Was the cameraman taking a nap? Did he mistake Maka for the bride? Wedding videos weren’t cheap. They _paid_ to have this filmed and put together by, by...someone. Someone remarkably incompetent.

The first chords of Canon in D began to play. The wedding party made its march down the aisle, but the camera wasn’t moving. Maka herself was clearly watching the wedding party, gradually beaming more and more with every passing second. 

“Move!” Marie blurted loud. “Move the camera, you idiot!” 

Her shouting must have pierced through the fabric of time and space and caught the cameraman’s attention, because the film almost immediately shifted away from Maka and towards the aisle. Most of the bridesmaids and groomsmen had already gathered by the altar, but the film did catch Azusa and Spirit stiffly walking arm in arm. Neither had been thrilled to be paired, but they had bit their lips and bore it like champions. 

Marie’s sister walked down the aisle by herself with a wiggling child in her arms. “That’s you!” Marie said to her daughter, delighted. “I think still have the cute little dress we put you in. Somewhere.”

Shelly was hardly a year old in the footage, but now she was full grown. An adult preparing to leave home and make her own way in the world. The nostalgia was enough to bring a tear to Marie’s eye. 

“I wonder when Maka will appear again,” her husband noted in a droll voice. “I miss seeing her monopolize the screen.”

“Maybe she’ll butt in during the middle of our vows,” Marie muttered with crossed arms. “Or maybe she’ll jump out of our cake! Or maybe--OH! There I am!”

Her younger self stepped into the light, front and center, in full HD. Marie was a vision in her sleeveless wedding dress with a billowing skirt that swished with her every movement. Her wedding eyepatch was shimmery gold. There was something incredibly strange about viewing her younger self from afar, watching her own memory play out before her through somebody else’s eyes, but it was far from disorienting. It left her breathless. 

“You inherited my hips and waist, I’m afraid,” Franken noted to their daughter.

“Clearly,” Shelly agreed. “And your height too, thank Death.”

Marie flapped her hand in their direction to shush their commentary before the highlight of the ceremony.

She and Franken stood beneath the chuppah canopy and stared at each other with unmasked happiness. The rabbi started to speak, and the camera edged away. 

“Nooo,” Marie moaned with defeat. Maka was, once again, center stage in a state of pretty obliviousness. And there she remained for another two minutes of footage before a sloppy scene change cut to the reception. 

Marie opened her mouth to express her absolute _indignation,_ but stopped when the camera zoomed in on the newly wedded couple waltzing in the middle of a grand ballroom. When the bride nearly rolled her ankle mid-spin, and the groom is there to scoop her up and left her by the waist. Had Marie not experienced the dance firsthand, shie might have thought the trip and lift was rehearsed. The entire family watched the scene unfold, transfixed and nostalgic. 

When their first dance was done, brass instruments picked up the tempo and guests rushed into the ballroom. Soon everyone in the room was dancing. 

A sliver of blonde hair was visible in the corner of the shot, and her husband pointed at the screen. “I remember now,” Franken said. “Spirit was supposed to film the entire thing, but he couldn’t because he was in the wedding party. So he gave the camera to--”

“Soul Eater Albarn,” Marie realized aloud. “Nee Evans,” she added as an afterthought.

The film now hovered over Marie and her new husband, capturing their every move. Lurking on the edges was Maka, whose pigtails and pleated skirt darted in and out of frame. Dancing with her was Soul, her weapon and eventual lover.

She should have realized it earlier, really. It was odd that Maka would sit through the entire ceremony by herself when her weapon had been invited as well. But he was behind the camera, trying in vain to focus on another woman and utterly failing. 

Had her wedding video not been sacrificed in this display of unrequited love, Marie might have found it endearing. Instead, she felt cheated. Like her memories had been inadvertently stomped on by a kid too wrapped up in his own love life to remember whose bloody wedding it was. The Shibusen community was in the habit of completely forgetting about Marie and her accomplishments, but did it really have to do that at her own wedding?

As if they sensed the direction of Marie’s thoughts, Franken and Shelly began to conspire. “Is it too late to ruin _their_ wedding video?” Shelly asked her father. 

“Yes,” Franken responded. “But their firstborn is only just entering kindergarten. There’s 12 years worth of childhood memories we can still ruin.”

Shelly nodded, understanding. “A long con. I like it. We can hack their digital photo albums and replace their baby photos with pictures of me.”

“Well, we do have that one photo of you still covered head to toe in afterbirth.” 

“If we’re smart enough, they might not even realize what we’ve done until they play their kid’s high school graduation slideshow.”

“Marie, are you alright?”

While listening to her family plot juicy, petty revenge, Marie failed to notice the tear welling up in her eye. The events of the wedding video were tragic, but they paled in comparison to what she had built afterwards. She brushed the tear aside and hooked her arms around her husband and daughter’s shoulders.

“I love you two so much, you know that?”


End file.
